A Clinic in Bad Parenting - How NOT to Coach Your Son!

I can't remember the exact moment I crossed the line and became one of "those" Dad's.

Maybe it was when he was 9 and I signed him up to train with 3 different teams for the month of August so he could be adequately prepared for the upcoming fall season.

Maybe it was a few months later when he scored using his right foot when I felt he should have used his left. I told him on the way home that if I had been the referee I wouldn't have counted the point. "You're lucky you didn't get thrown out of the game." I told him.

It could have been the time I got tired of watching him dodge balls that were coming to hard at him and demanded that he kick the ball at me from point blank range as hard as he could to prove that it doesn't hurt.

Then there countless instances when parents would tell him he played a nice game and I muttered something like "don't get carried away, you stunk up the joint on defense."

Or maybe it was tonight.

Make no mistake - my son is a good athlete (he's not a bad  hoops player either fwiw.) He's got gifts. Stuff you can't teach.  I could have worked my ass off as a boy and never would have been half the player he is - God didn't bless me with his speed, his coordination, his strength.

His potential.

He's a good player,  but that's not enough for me.  I expect him to be great. I've actually told him he has a "responsibility" to be great. Who the hell am I? Vince Lombardi reincarnated? I coach youth soccer for God's sake!

Yes, since I'm putting it all out there I might as well admit it: I think scholarship. I know it's wrong. I know the odd - better than most parents.  I know that this kind of thinking is what makes some parents so stupid they kill their child's love for their passion. .

And then there's the fact that makes my thinking just plain asinine: He's fucking 12.

The teammate he had the longest. I pulled him from that team - I'm still not sure if I made the decision for the right reasons. 

What the hell is wrong with me?

I'm not trying to relive past glory through my son. I had no glory  - I had no athletic ability.

I'm not much better when I coach him at hoops. 

I'm not trying to make myself famous through him. I know some doubt that - but honestly I don't feel that's my motivation. I know myself pretty well.

But what drives my lunacy?

I want him to be what he can be,  or more accurately what I think he can be. I want him to be a star.

He doesn't get mad at my rants for the most part. He laughs them off. His sister clued him in a long time ago. But it doesn't change the fact that I want to strangle him every time I feel  like he's loafing - which is basically all of the time. . When he's just relaxing and enjoying himself rather than pushing himself hard to be better - I want to commit hari kari.

Jojo is a good-natured, fun-loving, perspective-having kid. In so many ways I wish I was more like him. And yet those qualities I adore become liabilities in my eyes  once the whistle blows. I want intensity. I want focus. I want him to kill himself trying.

This is so hard to write.

Tonight's practice was especially bad. I had a bad day at work.  I was surprised to find out I was going to be running practice this evening. The kids were acting like kids - goofing off, needing to be told 4 times to even think about doing anything I instructed them too...Normally I enjoy the stupidity of prepubescent boys - tonight it drove me insane.

Of course I didn't take it out on all of the kids. Jojo was my target. I called him lazy. I had him do a lap every time he screwed something up or I felt he was loafing. (Jojo's done a LOT of laps over time). I was harsh. Normally I mix my harshness with humor - there wasn't much balance tonight.

Toward the end of practice as we scrimmaged, Jojo made what I thought was a lazy effort defending the teams  most skilled player. I stopped practice and called the team over.

"Listen up everybody!" I shouted "my son is going to explain why it's a good idea to stand around like a doof when you're playing defense. Go ahead Jojo, tell them why it's a good strategy."



The boys laughed - not at Jojo but at the ridiculousness of their mentor. One of the players even said "nobody scored coach, relax. Jojo's good."

Jojo seemed to laugh it off. But 30 seconds later I saw that he was crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked - as if I had no idea what could POSSIBLY be wrong!

"You're yelling at me!" he said through tears. "Can I sit out?" He's NEVER asked to sit out before.

I barked that no he couldn't - that it's time he starts playing like he gave a crap.

There's nothing right about what I did. Some of you may be ready to call DYFS at this point. I realized I was out of hand. I took a deep breath and  I was actually ready to pull him aside and apologize.

The boy I don't want to lose. 

Except before I could do so, all of a sudden he started playing.

For five fricking minutes he was the player I know he can be. He battled up and down the field, The aforementioned skilled player who was abusing him all night all of a sudden couldn't do anything against him.  Five  minutes - as darkness was descending on a meaningless practice. Five minutes - I saw what I wanted. I saw he can be great.

But at what cost?

 I don't know. I do know that I don't belong coaching my son .Circumstances have led me to be coaching more practices than I thought I would.

For the sake of argument  - and ONLY that reason - let's assume he IS the best player on the team.

So what?

He can be the best player on the team, in the Lehigh Valley - whatever - but it's a HUGE world out there. On one level I understand the odds - but in parts of me I hate to think about I feel like he can play with anybody.

I need to calm down. I need to pull back before I kill his love for the game. I need to stop my rants at practice before him, and his teammates lose respect for me as a coach and a Father. Tonight I needed Mary to rein me in. Or my friend Brian who helped me coach my prior team - he was good about shutting me up when I was about to strangle my son.

But it's not really up to Mary or Brian is it?

It's up to me. As was pointed out by a wise man earlier: He's fucking 12

Maybe he'll decide he wants to be a great player, maybe he won't. Maybe he has the skills to be a great player, maybe he doesn't.

I'm told I'm a good Father regularly. I wasn't today.

Our first game of the Spring season is tomorrow. Redemption is a beautiful thing.

Dear Complaining Parents...From Coach Aaron

I hear your disparaging comments about my coaching ability and I know it's not an accident that I do.
I'll take this moment to respond.

What I want to say first is I'm not mad at  you. You want the best for your kids as any parent does. And I have - and I hate to admit it - done my time as one of "those" parents. So I look at your complaining as comeuppance for when I spent an entire season raising hell because I didn't like how a softball coach was speaking to, using, playing my daughter. I'm still embarrassed about it - but I learned from it.

I am a well meaning Dad who coaches basketball and soccer. I don't consider myself overwhelmingly qualified to coach. At every registration for each sport I check the box that I'm willing to coach,or assist, or help. And then I write clearly above the box that "I will coach if you are in need of coaches, but I don't want to stand in the way of anyone else who wants to coach."

I am always called to coach.

I won't speculate on why you elected not to coach - but my guess is you will say that you don't have the time. I'm not sure I have the time either. I often go into work early on practice days and rarely do I have time to go home and eat before practice starts. Mary brings my dinner to the office or often I eat at the practice field while changing out of my work clothes in the bathroom.

Don't think that my time commitment is limited to showing up for practice and games. I spend a lot of time planning out the practices by reading articles and watching different drills on videos. Of the dozens of drills on any particular skill that I can find online, only a select few are appropriate for the age and skill level of my kids, it takes time to parse through this.

I line fields early on Saturday morning. I go to storage sheds at odd hours of the night and sort through boxes of uniforms and equipment to make sure we have what we need.I organize team pictures. I have often personally delivered uniforms to peoples houses for various reasons. I attend coaches meetings. I respond to every email regarding practice time and game locations even though more often than not the information is readily available. I killed an entire weekend over the Summer going to a coaching clinic so I could be a licensed soccer coach. That doesn't include the stuff I did online.

I have spent hours on the phone with various parties because one of my kids parents forgot to register him and the deadline had passed.  I have stood in parking lots with kids whose parents got caught up in something and couldn't pick them up on time.   The registration process is ridiculously long and tedious - all of these leagues have so many rules...Military operations are done with less paperwork. I organize end of season parties and make darn sure I have something good to say about every single kid - and sometimes this takes a LOT of time! :-)

I have dealt with discipline issues - treading carefully between getting my point across but not accusing anyone of raising their kids the wrong way. I have broken up a fight between parents after a game and went through HOURS of paperwork and hearings defending my kids.

I am told I shouldn't be doing all of this - that I should have a parent do it. Sometimes I am fortunate enough to have one who is willing. Often I'm not.

Apparently they don't have time.

I respect your intimate knowledge of the game and  your extensive resume which makes you 10 times more capable of coaching this team than I am - I do wish you could find the time. I have gone more than my share of nights without sleep trying to balance everything - maybe I need better time management.

I try to teach fundamentals the kids can take anywhere rather than focusing on set plays to set up the kids who already know what they're doing. I know the plays you have in mind would lead us to victory and my lack of focus on them is costing us games - but I'm  trying..And when a kid who has never had an athletic moment in his life scores a goal or makes a basket and their parents are in tears - I feel vindicated. Maybe there's a happy medium - I am open to that - but please don't lose sight that I do what I do with EVERY kid in mind.


I'd love to play every kid equally. I also wish all of them were equally talented, showed up at an equal amount of practices and showed an equal amount of dedication when they were there. I guess I could completely ignore these factors and just go with an egalitarian system of playing time. But that would cost us games even before they start - and I also understand that you expect me to win.

Make no mistake - I hate playing some kids less than others - I feel for those kids, but I've been around long enough to know the kids are happier when they win playing 15 minutes than when they lose playing 20.

I try everything I can to give everything I can to figure out a way to get every kid an appropriate amount of playing time - it gets blown up regularly when I get a text an hour before the game - or sometimes while the game is going on - that a kid won't be there because he has a "school function." School functions apparently appear out of nowhere.

I don't get paid for this and I wouldn't feel right taking any pay.What you may not know is this experience often costs me more than my sons registration fee. I buy equipment that I think will help. I make up the difference when our collections for a mutual cause fall short. When one of the bigger kids on my team didn't have uniform shorts that fit him and I was running out of options to get them Mary suggested we make a run to a sporting goods store.

I scoffed at laying out the money to do this, after all, it's MY money - but Mary knew me all too well: I wasn't going to let that kid have to explain to anybody why he didn't have the same shorts as everyone else.  Another coach had an extra pair of shorts and we were able to save a few. The father wasn't much help - he paid the same amount as everyone else - why should he have to buy shorts?

But I'm no candidate for martyrdom. I know people that coach 2,sometimes THREE teams...Nobody else has the time. And  the responsibilities of commissioner - I have no idea how they do it. I honestly don't.

And the experience of kids are largely shaped by volunteers. Not just coaches; Youth group leaders, boy scout troop leaders, band parent organizations, room parents, PTO leaders,  and countless others. As a parent I feel it's my responsibility to help where I can - as other parent volunteers have made great experience for my kids possible.  I'm just trying to be fair.

Nor am I an altruist. I get a lot more than I give for doing this.

I get time with my son. Oh I'm not doing this to promote him - he'd be better served by another coach. He's the one that gets the most criticism and every minute he's on the floor or field I wonder if I'm playing him too much, is it fair? But still - I love sharing the time with him.

I get time with your kids - and they give me energy.They're funny and excited to learn. Many times I start practice after a bad day at work and by the end my problems are long forgotten. I love seeing these kids a couple of years after I've coached them - I love watching them grow.

I get to meet great people - I've made countless friends doing this. It's hard to make friends after 30 - but doing this makes it easy. I know you aren't happy with me but I hate to tell you - you're in the minority. And while I earlier lamented the lack of help - the other side of it is I get a LOT of help - if that makes sense.

So maybe your criticism is warranted. The joy and friendships I get doing this far outweigh any time and money outlays. In the end that's what matters. I get a great experience - maybe you have every right to feel I should be a better coach.

So thank you for your thoughtful criticism. And thank you for letting me enjoy your kids.